


Teamwork

by AsterRoc



Series: Teamwork [1]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Iron Man (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Enemies to ???, Enemy Swap, Gen, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other: See Story Notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:04:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterRoc/pseuds/AsterRoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch Black (Rise of the Guardians) and Loki Silvertongue (Avengers movieverse) team up to take on the Guardians and the Avengers together.</p><p>This is set soon after both The Avengers film and Rise of the Guardians, which I picture as both being set in Spring 2012 (RotG first, then Avengers).  New York is still recovering from the Chitauri attack, the Avengers are still nursing their wounds and learning to work together, Jack is still learning his role as a Guardian, and the other Guardians are still learning about who he is and how to work with him.  The events of <i>Iron Man 3</i>, <i>Thor: The Dark World</i> (Thor 2), and <i>The Sandman and the War of Dreams</i> (The Guardians of Childhood 4) are mostly disregarded here so don't worry if you're not up to speed, though there may be some minor (non-spoilery) references.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Antarctica

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Old Acquaintances](https://archiveofourown.org/works/583553) by [BlackRook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackRook/pseuds/BlackRook). 



> Jack’s friendship with Steve from “[Old Acquaintances](http://archiveofourown.org/works/583553)” is canon in this work, though not all the events necessarily are. 
> 
> ~~I do not have a specific posting schedule for this yet, but I'm hoping for at least 1 chapter a week; at the time of posting Ch 1 I have 4 chapters written, but I do not yet have a feel for how long Part I will be.~~ Note updated 2015 March 15: This work is currently on hiatus - I have the rest planned in my head, but it isn't on paper yet. To warn you ahead of time, Part I will end on a cliffhanger, and I have no clue where Part II will go if I ever write it, and I'm currently giving it even odds on Part II eventually being a happy ending vs. a tragedy. 
> 
> I also don't know yet how far I'm going to be taking the relationships and descriptions thereof listed in the tags, they could be anywhere from friendship to explicit (which I define as knowing what appendage goes in what orifice). I will change the rating/warning tags when I know, but I intend nothing that would require a trigger warning - that is, no rape/non-con/dub-con/underage; if there's sex, there will be enthusiastic consent by all parties involved, and all parties will be considered adults (if not necessarily emotionally mature ones; in this work I consider Jack to be adult).

He stands on the edge of an icy cliff in Antarctica. The drop below him is far, with nothing at the bottom but sea water more than cold enough to freeze but for the salt in it, but he is not afraid – should he slip and fall, he can simply fly back to where he stands now. His body is filled with the rage and tension of frustration, though for the life of him he cannot remember why now. Something about failing his team members as he always does, something about allowing his enemy to get the better of his friends, all as the result of some stupid selfish thing he did. He growls out a word into the frigid air, a curse perhaps, but one muffled and distorted into a grunt by the wind swirling around him. 

“I thought this might happen,” says a smooth voice behind him, and he feels his eyes widen in shock at the intrusion. “They never really believed in you, I was just trying to show you that.” As the seductive voice continues, he can feel his face first fall in agreement with the words, and then scrunch up in rage. “But I understand…” And he turns around and shoots a bright blue-white blast at the black-robed man standing out against the white of the snow, which the man dodges easily. 

“You know, just because you’re tall and dark, doesn’t mean you get the handsome for free. Because that shapeless robe thing might be doing wonders for your profile, but it really isn’t helping emphasize your physique,” Tony quips as he fires another repulsor blast at the figure, who this time raises his arm to block. As he does so, black sand rises from nowhere and shields him from the energy beam. Tony dodges to the side, evading the other man’s gaze for a moment, but then with a gesture the sand shoots towards where Tony now hovers in the air above a crevasse and surrounds him, seeping into all the joints of the Mark V suit he wears. He can hear the sand grinding against the metal, and suddenly his repulsors flicker and die, leaving him tumbling into the deep pit. 

Tony hits the ground next to his bed and wakes, gasping, legs tangled in the sheets still stretched up onto the mattress. He rubs his face to rid it of the nightmare, and realizes he can only remember one part, the part where he knew he was a selfish failure. “I need a drink,” he mutters aloud, not expecting Jarvis to reply. There is a whirring from somewhere to his right and Dummy wheels over, surprisingly actually carrying a bottle of scotch rather than a flamethrower or fire extinguisher. Tony groans out his thanks to the robot and takes a deep pull from the bottle to clear his head. 

It isn’t until he’s gotten halfway through the bottle that he realizes that the closest horizontal surface he could have fallen off of is his work bench, and his legs are actually tangled up in wires. He really should start sleeping in a bed more often.

* * *

Jack sits on a cliff in Antarctica, one leg dangling over the edge of the ledge and the other curled up underneath himself, staff resting across his knees. The water below him is so salty that the only way he had been able to freeze it when playing by himself earlier was to separate the water into two components: one more fresh which could freeze, and an even saltier component which could not. He has stopped playing now however, and watches fascinated as a man studies his creation. Jack is as still as a snowdrift so as to not draw attention to himself through his motion. His white hair and blue hoodie blend well with the sky and snow behind him, while his snow-covered brown trousers match the dark side of the cliff as well as if Jack had planned this vantage point. 

The sculpture that the man circles is strange, even to Jack’s own eyes. It is wide at the base, has a skinny trunk like that of a tree, and the top flares into tangled spikes topped with bushy round caps. If Jack were prone to introspection, he might have realized it contained elements of his inadvertent sculpture made with Pitch on this very continent, and elements of the trees in the Warren, the first place where he had felt fully accepted by his new friends, before he had destroyed it all with his selfish pursuit of his past, and then salvaged it all with the help of the children of Burgess. But Jack is not prone to introspection, and instead thinks it is just some strange spikey lumpy thing. 

The man below him however, is inspecting it closely. His build is lean like Pitch’s but slightly smaller in stature. Rather than wearing a simple black robe, he wears a long black jacket with green and gold accents on the broad shoulder pads and the long tails hanging both in front of and behind his legs sheathed in tight black leather. Extraneous straps with gold buckles crisscross the man’s chest, holding unnecessary layers in place. Jack chuckles to himself at the thought that even though this individual is dressed so differently from Pitch, clearly they have similar sensibilities when it comes to dramatic clothing. And their hair would be a matching set as well: black, greasy, and swept back from a high forehead with a widow’s peak dipping back down slightly. Despite the ornate nature of his clothes, Jack doubts they provide much protection against the wind, and none at all over his exposed hands and head, but the man doesn’t seem to notice the chill at all as he circles the sculpture, then stops to place one bare palm against it. 

The man bows his head and Jack can barely make out from where he sits watching that he closes his eyes, apparently in concentration. After a few moments Jack realizes that there is a faint green glow around his hand, and as soon as he notices this, the man’s eyes snap open and his head whips up and around to face Jack. A slow knowing smirk spreads across his face as Jack stands up in shock; it is a look familiar to him and Jack realizes that this is no human at all, and isn’t even a benign spirit, but one more like Pitch. Taking a step backwards, Jack hops up onto the Wind and urges it to bring him to the other side of the Earth. It is time to report this to North.


	2. The Hyper Obscurity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Where the Tesseract radiated energy and light, just waiting for the right magical or mechanical device to harvest it, this thing absorbed light, making the surrounding area darker even as it glowed more strongly itself. This was why the God of Mischief had decided to bring the Nightmare King into his plans._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Having some writer's block in Ch 5, but here, have Ch 2 and hopefully it'll work itself out before I catch up to it.

_Some time earlier..._

In some ways the object reminded Loki of the Tesseract, in that both were cube-shaped in three-dimensional space, both glowed with an un-Midgardian light, and both were ancient artifacts of unspeakable power, but that’s where the similarities ended. Where the Tesseract radiated energy and light, just waiting for the right magical or mechanical device to harvest it, this thing absorbed light, making the surrounding area darker even as it glowed more strongly itself. This was why the God of Mischief had decided to bring the Nightmare King into his plans. Loki had saved the object since he had stolen it from Odin’s vaults during his brief time as King of Asgard, a scant couple years prior. Now was as good a time as any to bring it out, while his enemies were still recovering from the Battle for New York. 

Or so he told his ersatz ally. 

Loki watched warily as Pitch’s black sands swirled around the cube, responding to the minute gestures of his gray hand. Two thin tendrils of sand approached the cube from either side and gently touched the surface. The moment they did so however, there was a flash of light, and suddenly the amount of sand was halved. Pitch staggered backwards for a moment, one hand clutched to his chest and panting, but slowly the heaving breaths turned into laughter. 

“Oh, this is good,” he said, drawling out the last word in pleasure. 

Loki’s face remained impassive, arms crossed on his chest and still leaning against the wall of the other being’s dark cavern, but he raised one eyebrow in a question. 

“The humans talk of an object called a blackbody, which can absorb all light and radiates all light.” Loki nodded slightly at this. He has sat invisibly through a number of astrophysics lectures, trying to understand the Midgardian idea of how the Nine Realms were connected. It did not take him long to realize they knew nothing of Yggdrasil, but he remained for the semester because their study of stars was more advanced than Asgard’s. Stars were an example of these “blackbodies” – they absorbed any light they received, and changed it into heat, which combined with their own heat from nuclear fusion was radiated back out as light. Blackbodies were not, in fact, black. This object however, was mostly black, with some brown sparkles in the center and the occasional flash of pure white light. 

“Well this truly is a blackbody, absorbing all light, but moreover it also absorbs dark.” Pitch was gesturing excitedly now. “It used my nightmare sand to power the flash of light you saw. You were right to bring me onboard with this.” A slow smile spread over the sprit of fear’s face. “With me to power it and you to guide the resulting energy, we will make quick work of both our nemeses.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was past tense because it was a flashback. Most of the work will be "now" and in the present tense, but if I do any more flashbacks they'll also be past tense. 
> 
> I'm looking forward posting to the next chapter, told from from Tony's POV, when Steve brings him a few broken StarkPads.


	3. All I Want for Christmas is a StarkPad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony has an unexpected guest, asking for a replacement StarkPad.

_Now_

Something about the man in black who wasn’t Pitch rings a bell for Jack, so as soon as he arrives at the Workshop rather than talking to North he wanders down to the level where the elves are helping the yeti test the electronic toys. After a bit of poking around, he manages to find a group of elves jumping on a StarkPad and grabs it from them. At the elves’ outraged jingles one of the yeti turns around to watch, but after a moment turns back to her own work. Jack shrugs internally; from the way the yeti have treated him in the past, he thinks they probably lump him in with the elves: a useful tool for finding out when things will break. 

Jack looks at the device for a moment. He’s seen children and adults playing with them before, but this is his first opportunity to lay his own hands on one. It can’t be too hard to figure out how it works. 

Thirty minutes, three broken StarkPads, and seven broken elves later, Jack’s figured out that the Workshop doesn’t have wifi and North’s StarkPads don’t come with satellite data plans. He’s just going to have to ask an old friend for a favor.

* * *

Tony is hanging upside down from his hovering left boot, leaning up (in a great workout for his abs, though an inadvertent one) to grip the toe repulsor carriage with the pliers in his left hand, and adjusting its angle with the screwdriver in his right when Jarvis announces that Steve is outside the workshop and wishes to enter. Despite his AI’s dulcet tones specifically designed to be soothing, Tony startles so hard he drops the pliers to the ground below him, and in the process accidentally twists the repulsor mounting so that he is suddenly thrown into a spiral. The world spins around him alarmingly for an extremely short period of time before he crashes into a wall ass first, curses spewing out of his mouth as soon as he regains his breath. The left toe repulsor continues to fire for a while, pressing his heel into the wall, but then slowly sputters out. 

“Tony!” the soldier cries out in concern as he slides over on his knees and clasps Tony’s shoulder almost before the jets cease, and tries to help right him from where he lies with his back on the floor and legs propped against the wall. Tony attempts to raise his head, but due to the vertigo only manages to succeed in pushing himself harder against the floor. Tony sees a slick sheen on the ground where Steve skidded over, but it’s just a bit of fluid, perhaps the coolant line sprung a leak when he hit the wall. 

“Jarvis, I know for a fact that I told you not to let anyone in while I’m working,” the inventor scolds from the floor, twisting his torso to pull his shoulder away from Steve’s hand. 

“Sir, I determined that if you had any injuries then Captain Rogers would be better suited to addressing them than either myself or Dummy.” The AI does not sound the slightest bit apologetic, and Tony rolls his eyes and finally accepts Steve’s help to regain his feet. 

“Thanks buddy,” he says and taps Steve with the back of his hand. It’s a friendly love-tap, really, not a punch, Steve shouldn’t be giving him that death glare, and even if it were a punch, which maybe it was, he’s got that super soldier healing factor thing going on. Looking away from the light blue eyes as they flash back to concern again, Tony sees a plastic bag with some metal and glass parts where Steve dropped it when he rushed over. The bag tinkles and jangles as Steve picks it up again, the sounds of metal and glass. “What’ve you got there?” he asks even as his eyes inventory the parts he can see through the translucent white plastic. Two round corners connected by a metal edge 5” in length, and he counts one more corner where he can see. A piece of glass jagged along three-quarters of its edge, and straight with flat copper wires around the remaining edge, with a spacing of 1.5mm and each 0.5mm thick. Looking at the volume of the bag, and that specific shade of green to the circuit board poking through a hole in the lower left, that makes for probably… numbers flash through his head and the answer appears with a box around it: 2 StarkPads, model 5.4b. Tony reads his answer aloud to Steve, adding, “and why have you brought them to me?”

“Three of them actually.” Oh of course, Tony had rounded down on the volume, and there were probably more parts that hadn’t made it into the bag. Garbage in, garbage out – that’s what happened to his calculations when he was working from insufficient data, though truly he should’ve known to round up in this case. “We were hoping for a replacement. We only need one, but I’d heard you were also trying to work on their durability, so we thought you might want to see how these three failed.” 

Aware that the room is virtually crowded with himself, Jarvis, Dummy, and Steve, but that the latter has entered alone and likely wouldn’t consider the AIs present to be “people,” Tony raises one eyebrow at the “we.” When Steve fails to respond within two seconds, Tony’s impatience can’t take it any longer (other people’s minds are just so _slow_ ) so he sighs and asks aloud, “‘We’, who’s this ‘we’?” 

Steve’s eyes flick to his right for a moment, evading Tony’s, and then back to him again. “Um, me and a friend.” The blush on Steve’s face would usually indicate lying, but something about that glance Steve threw to the side strikes Tony as simple embarrassment rather than an outright lie. Tony begins to pace as he talks and thinks. Never enough data. 

“Look, I don’t need to know what you’re doing with the ladies on your off-time, but if it involves the destruction of my tech I just hope that she’s sturdier than these were, plus you can rest assured that I’ll pull the videos off them and if there’s anything good I’ll send them to Clint and Fury, and I’ll have Jarvis post them to my so-top-secret-that-all-my-fans-and-investors-know-about-it Stark Industries leaks wiki, and I’m sure if it’s half as dirty as what I’m thinking about right now that it’ll go viral within a day, maybe two tops, and it’ll be plastered all over the internet, and besides if you’re using these as sex toys I’ll have you know that I already have a line of those selling under a shell company buried so deep that not even Pepper knows for sure that I own the company and designed and tested all their products myself. Though considering your physique,” and here Tony briefly stops his continual movement to look Steve up and down very pointedly, “I’d really recommend the heavy duty mechanical bull, as the cheaper model probably couldn’t take more than a week of use with you, regardless of which attachment you use, it’s the major joints in the base that would give out. You know what, I’ll just send you one, on the house, courtesy of the Iron Man himself. Jarvis,” Tony looks up, and rubs his left bicep where he feels the sweat cooling, and takes a step towards the storage cabinet with some of his latest completed tech. 

“Yes, sir?” 

“Get on that.” 

“Already done, sir. I took the liberty of packaging it discretely and addressing it to his Brooklyn residence.” 

“No no no,” Tony shakes his head and waves a hand in the air. “That just won’t do. Very bold packaging, and have it delivered here, to the Avengers common room. They could use a laugh this week. Natasha especially.” He takes a couple steps away from the cabinet again while talking, towards Steve, and makes a mental note to check the air circulation algorithm, as this part of the room seems a little warmer. “Actually,” he continues, “she could use a laugh every week, that lady doesn’t know what a party is. But you know what, make sure it’s got my name on the return address so he can blame it on my poor taste in jokes, but still have the bull to ride anyway.” 

“Very good, sir,” the droll tones reply. 

Steve stands agape throughout Tony’s entire monologue, and then the back-and-forth with his AI, his face alternately blanching as white as snow, and flushing beet red. His eyes keep darting off to the side, in the same direction as before, between himself and the metal cabinet, and as Tony continues to pace, he feels a slight draft from that direction. 

“Yeah, we’ll see what Natasha thinks of that,” Tony repeats himself, eyes moving rapidly as he considers his next move. He takes a few quick steps further towards the tech cabinet, noting that it is in the same direction as Steve has been looking. As he moves that way, Steve jerks towards him, a hand beginning to rise, and then freezes still. Tony keeps walking, goose bumps rising on his bare arms as he passes by an area a few steps from his original position, and opens the cabinet. Just to be sure he’s not being too subjective, and has the right location for the StarkPads, he asks, “Jarvis, how’s the AC in here, and which shelf has the GSM models?” 

“More than adequate, sir, the temperature is slightly lower than the nominal setting, and the shelf at waist height. All units are fully charged.” 

Tony makes a small humming noise in acknowledgement, grabs a StarkPad from where it rests on an induction charger on the indicated shelf, pokes at the settings for a few moments to make sure the GSM is activated and billed to Stark Industries, then turns to Steve. There are water drops on the wall between where he stands and where Steve remains rooted to the spot, reminding Tony of the inside of a window pane on a winter day. “Think fast,” Tony barks out, and flips the StarkPad towards Steve forehand, directly through the spot of cold – where it doesn’t exactly stop short in mid-air, but rapidly changes direction, taking a new arc around and down, pivoting around a point in the air, reminding Tony of nothing more than someone catching a Frisbee in a single hand. 

“Oh oops,” says a young male voice, and Tony raises an eyebrow and looks between Steve and where the StarkPad appears to float as he does so. The glass surface is slightly fogged, except in the outline of a thumbprint. 

Tony crosses his arms over his chest. “Care to introduce me to your friend, Steve? And Jarvis, categorize any unexpected cold spots in the volume of a room as a friendly individual, and give him, oh, let’s say, Happy-level access.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hee, this one was fun to write. I kept rewriting Tony's deduction process, trying to show the little pieces of evidence he was building up in his head over Jack's existence, without explicitly narrating his thought process. I picture that a lot of Tony's process of deduction isn't an explicit narrative in his head, but little things adding up as he rambles on about something apparently entirely unrelated, but even as he talks the little pieces get fit together and then presto, he has the solution! I hope that managed to come through. 
> 
> The next chapter is a direct continuation of this one, though since it needs a rewrite for POV it may be more than a week before it's up. I have a couple more chapters sketched out, but they need fleshing out too.


	4. I Believe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack catches Tony up on how belief works.

“So let me get this right, people can only see you if they believe in you?”

Jack nods at this from where he sits atop Tony’s workbench, one leg tucked against his chest and the same arm draped over the leg and holding his staff, the other leg dangling beneath, swinging with his own youthful energy. That hand rests on the table top, absently scrawling patterns in the frost he periodically sends across the surface when the old layer has melted. Jack watches the quick man’s mind churning behind his eyes as he rubs a hand over the dark hair on his chin. When they first began the conversation and before Jack settled in one place, Tony would sometimes be looking in the wrong direction until Jack spoke, apparently only able to hear him. But by the time Jack has caught him up to the present day though, Tony’s eyes are tracking with Jack’s face as he speaks. The way that Tony’s mind leaps from small facts to conclusions, and from idea to idea, reminds Jack of some of the children he plays with. His sense of humor too, though usually the children making those sorts of innuendos are the ones who are the least likely to see Jack, or the most likely to stop seeing him soon. 

This latest thought causes Jack to frown, but Tony continues talking as he always does, pulling Jack’s thoughts back to the present. “And that goes for hearing you too?” At this Steve blushes furiously, and Jack knows he’s thinking of the comments he’d made to his soldier friend before. Poor Steve had been stuck between Tony’s obvious innuendos, and Jack’s comments to which he was trying to not respond so as to save Jack the discomfort of his being invisible to Tony made obvious. But he had figured it out, and now believes in Jack, though it’s taking Tony longer to come to grips with that belief than it does for most children. Having adult believers is even stranger than having normal ones, but Jack decides not to dwell on that, and turns back to the conversation. 

A slow grin spreads across the inventor’s face at seeing Steve’s blush. “Jack, you’re going to have to tell me what you think of that mechanical bull later, I get the feeling you had a few choice comments, but meanwhile I’m presuming that I could hear you when you caught the StarkPad because I was already half convinced that _someone_ was there based on Steve’s behavior and Jarvis’s unsteady climate control, and then of course you caught the StarkPad and I was certain you were there, and that’s when I heard you.” Jack nods confirmation at all this. Some of his normal believers have reported discovering Jack in stages as well, and Tony’s experience seems to fit despite his being an adult. “I didn’t really know who you were at the time, so I guess I couldn’t see you until I knew that part, and now I do.” The man rubs a hand over his face tiredly, but does not cease talking, slurring his next words through his hand somewhat. “Gawd! Belief. Magic. You folks breaking the laws of physics, you and Sparky and Reindeer Games, all of you.” 

“Sparky and Reindeer Games?” asks Jack, looking from Tony to Steve. This sounds like what the kids call an inside joke. Tony waves a hand at the other adult human. 

“He means our teammate Thor,” his old friend Steve supplies, “who’s some sort of alien demigod from another dimension, and his adoptive brother Loki, who’s one of the bad guys.” These aren’t the strangest things Jack’s ever heard about another being, so he just nods and listens as Steve continues. “Thor was known as the god of thunder to some ancient peoples, and he does actually have an affinity for lightning, hence ‘Sparky’. You should meet him sometime, you could probably have a bit of fun comparing what you can both do.” Jack isn’t sure whether to be eager or worried at this, but decides to put on an encouraging smile anyway as Steve continues his explanation of the nicknames. “His brother Loki, well he’s adopted, he's actually a frost giant, but Thor treats him as a brother… Loki is ‘Reindeer Games’ because he wears this gold helmet with big horns. I guess the gold kinda matches some of the accents on his costume—” 

Tony interrupts. “That man – god, alien, whatever – has this serious leather fetish going on.” 

A shiver goes down Jack’s spine at this, and he sits up straighter on the edge of the workbench. “Leather fetish?”

* * *

Steve has been watching the conversation between Jack and Tony in fascination. Although Tony expresses aloud his difficulty believing in magic and that belief itself can influence things, Steve also sees the engineer staring fixedly into the distance, eyes moving rapidly as Jack describes the rules of his world, and the soldier knows that the other man is rapidly absorbing these rules and building himself a new framework. It took Steve months to figure out how things worked for his friend, and now that Jack is a Guardian Steve is sure that some of the rules must be different, and that it’ll take him more weeks to figure out those differences, but even through his skepticism Tony takes it all in and runs with it. His extrapolations on the process of his discovering Jack’s existence show that he’s already trying to test those rules, see where their limits are, see where they break, see how he can work with them and around them. 

Now however, they discuss another being of myth and magic, their recent enemy and their team member’s brother, Loki Silvertongue, Loki Liesmith. 

“Yeah, leather fetish,” Tony nods and continues, “all black with buckles everywhere, like some sort of reverse dominatrix with extra layers but just as much leather and buckles, all gold buckles though rather than the usual aluminum, and some green accents too…” Tony trails off, apparently realizing Jack’s bright blue eyes are fixed on his brown and a poleaxed expression covers the youthful face. “Jack? Kiddo? Talk to us here, Frosty.” 

Steve rolls his eyes at Jack’s new nickname, but watches his friend with concern as well. Until now, Jack’s position on the workbench has been casual, with the new StarkPad lying just out of arm’s reach. Now though, the winter spirit’s knuckles are even whiter than usual where he tightly grips his staff, and lacy patterns of frost are slowly curling to cover the entire bench from where his other hand rests upon it. “What’s wrong, Jack?” Steve gently asks. 

The frost sprite shakes himself, or perhaps shivers, but his gaze remains distant. “I’ve seen him,” he says in a soft voice. 

“Who?” Steve asks. 

Tony snaps back quickly, “Loki, he’s seen Loki. Where? When? How?” 

A few blinks of the bright blue eyes, and Jack finally makes eye contact again, with the inventor first, and then Steve. “I need to go.” He hops up onto the workbench and twirls his staff in his hand. “Thanks for the StarkPad, but I’m not going to need it after all.” He jumps up and seems to almost surf on a sudden breeze blowing through Tony’s workshop as he flies off to the far end of the room. Then comes to a sudden stop, flailing his arms and legs to slow himself, as he realizes the door through which he entered hard on Steve’s heels is closed and refuses to open at a gesture from the staff. When a quick glance around the workshop reveals no windows, he sheepishly turns back to Tony. “Hey, could you let me out?” 

The inventor raises one eyebrow while Steve continues to watch their interactions in fascination. “Y’know, you could just ask Jarvis. But I’d rather you explained yourself first.” 

A sardonic grin crosses Jack’s face. “Jarvis, could you open that door for me?” 

As the voice replies “Certainly, Mr. Frost,” the glass door slides open. 

Jack turns back to Tony again. “Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I’ve already done enough explaining for one day, and I’ve been cooped up in here too long. Steve, thanks for your help. Tony, thanks to you too, and I’m sure you’ll see me again.” 

And with that the flighty spirit shoots out the open door and flies up the stairs to the next level and out of their sight. The two men exchange glances as they hear him whoop for joy, followed by “Jarvis, find me an open window, wouldja?” 

Tony glances out the door as it shuts, and mutters “huh, apparently Jarvis _does_ believe in him. Who’da thunk.” Then he turns back to Steve with an offended look. “You put up with him, why not me?” 

Steve snorts. The two do have a lot of similarities, but… “Jack’s never offered to buy me a mechanical bull.” 

“My point exactly!” Tony throws his hands in the air in exasperation, then picks up the left boot once more. “Dummy, where’d the pliers go?” 

A large mechanical arm wheels up, proffering a hammer to its creator, and Steve quickly steps back and out of its way. But as Tony blindly holds out his hand for what he thinks is the pliers, the machine slams the hammer into the StarkPad hard, and it shatters. Tony rolls his eyes, then grabs the abandoned bag of three other broken devices from the floor and puts it on the table next to the new one. “Jarvis, put examining those all on my to-do list.” 

“Of course, sir.” 

Steve rolls his eyes in turn and sees himself out of the workshop, Tony’s AI opening the door for him without having to be asked. As he goes, he thinks on Tony and Jack. The winter spirit was more in touch with himself than Tony – Steve remembers Jack telling him of discovering his center just a few months ago. But then again despite his youthful appearance and personality, Jack is a couple hundred years older than the inventor. Tony though is an adult human and has no excuse whatsoever for his immaturity. Steve really wishes Tony would grow up at times, but then again, maybe if he did he wouldn’t be able to see and believe in Jack. And whatever his flaws (and there are many of them), Steve must admit that Tony is brilliant, and as both the inventor and as Iron Man he is an essential member of the team. 

Tony might not like to think of himself as a hero, but after New York, Steve now sees just how wrong he was about the man back on the helicarrier: Tony is a Guardian much the same way Jack is. 

Only with more sex toys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took me while a while to figure out the second half of the chapter needed to be from Steve's POV. I was reluctant b/c he's not a main character, but it couldn't be Jack because he was gone, and Tony just didn't fit, I wanted to show how Tony appears to others. And in the end Steve's the connection between the Avengers and the Guardians in this universe, so it's not bad to have him narrate. 
> 
> Did a big revision of the Ch 5 which was biting me in the butt, and I'm now stuck on Ch 6. :-P


	5. A Song of Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack explores his powers and makes a couple discoveries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got over the writer's block and wrote Ch 6, and then realized it needed to be swapped with Ch 5, so here it is. Good thing I work ahead, right? :-P Made a near-trivial change to the previous chapter too to fix a continuity problem: Steve mentions that Loki is a frost giant.

Jack spirals up into the cloud-filled sky above the Stark Tower, thinking about his conversation with Steve and Tony, and worrying about this new being, Loki. 

It’s only been a couple months since the battle in Burgess, but in the short time between when Jack surprised himself by creating the frost lightning that sent Pitch spiraling out of the sky the first time and then proved useless the second time, Jack has been diligently attempting to explore his powers. If he is to protect the children after all, he needs to know what weapons are in his arsenal. He had thought he’d discovered the last of them with the happy flakes two hundred years earlier, but clearly he had been wrong. So what else might he have hidden within himself that he doesn’t yet know about? 

Jack’s urge to learn more about his powers has become more, well, urgent, now that he’s being stalked by an evil demigod. It doesn’t help that Loki is something called a “frost giant” on top of his magic, or that Loki’s own brother has lightning-based powers. Anything that Jack can currently throw at Loki, the other is sure to know how to counter or even subvert. It’s imperative that Jack come up with a few new tricks for the other trickster. Besides, playing around with his powers is _fun_. 

He doesn’t choose Antarctica for today’s experiments because of its associations with first Pitch’s heavy-handed attempt at seduction, and then Loki’s discovery of his spikey blobby thing. He doesn’t choose the North Pole due to too great a chance of being observed by North’s helpers – as much as he knows North has his back, the yeti and elves are a different story. Jack is starting to wonder how far he can stray from the poles and still have the full power of their ice his beck and call when Baby Tooth peeks out of the pocket of his hoodie and reminds him of Mount Everest. Jack doesn’t startle at this, she has a tendency to show up unannounced and just stick around until he starts talking to himself, which he realizes now he must have been doing. Funny how he’s gotten so used to talking aloud when no one would hear him or care. Well, not actually funny. 

Jack thanks Baby Tooth for the idea and decides on K2 instead: the second highest mountain in the world though part of the same region, and much less well traveled than Everest. He wouldn’t want to inadvertently harm anyone attempting to scale the more famous mountain. Mother Nature already kills enough adults with such hubris; there is no need for Jack to contribute to the death toll as well. 

He settles in at the glacial plain below the mountain for some warm-up exercises. Working on his aim and distance with snowballs is routine, hitting stationary targets, hitting one flying snowball with another, and helps him limber up his powers so that he’s less likely to strain something when he really gets going. He takes a few seconds to suggest Baby Tooth go back home before he flies up to the top of the peak for the next step, as he doesn’t think the thin air and even more frigid cold would be any good for her. She agrees and gives his teeth a quick exam before flying off to the Tooth Palace. Once at the top of K2, Jack summons a blizzard, shaping targets with the clouds and hitting them with his frost lighting while riding the Wind to dodge between and around clouds. When that gets too easy, he finds a precarious perch on the side of the mountain, and hits the moving targets while he himself is stationary. Jack is so used to motion that this is actually significantly harder for him, but in the end it’s more an exercise in finesse of his known powers than an exploration of kind. 

Having worked up a good sweat of columnar flakes, Jack cools down by decorating the peak with penitentes: tall thin blades of hardened ice and snow. Rather than their natural tendency to space themselves closely with the blades pointed towards the Sun, Jack challenges himself to space them out more distantly, and has their blades oriented perpendicularly to the surfaces on which he forms them. He grins at the fun of defying nature, and just hopes that Mother Nature herself doesn’t mind. Whatever, the other Guardians will have his back if it should come to that – since he’s doing this as training for his Guardian duties, he’s certain they’d back him. He’s pretty sure at least. One can hope… 

Jack flies back down to the valley and lands gently upon his bare feet, then on a whim squats down and places his right hand upon the snow he does not sink into. Taking a firmer grip on his staff with his other hand, Jack lets it help focus his senses down into the snow, something he has not tried before. He feels the lighter fluffier layers at the top, and sifts his senses through the individual grains of crystals – mostly columnar flakes as expected at the low temperatures of any elevation in the Karakoram Range. Further down, below the snow, Jack senses where the crystals have melted and reformed once; in this era English speakers call it névé. Down another foot or two he reaches the firn: due to a few years of temperature changes and the added pressure of the material above, the former snowflakes are no longer separate grains, but now begin to flow into each other with only scant air bubbles remaining. And finally, further down yet, he reaches the glacial ice, nearly all the air pockets squeezed out, and he knows that were he physically at that depth all he would see is the same blue as his eyes. Huh, so that’s why they’re such a bright shade. 

As he sinks through the layers, the snow and ice sing out to him, humming with an energy and a deep thrum that fills Jack’s mind until, were he anyone but the spirit of winter, he knows he would have lost himself in it forever. As is, Jack is only remotely aware of the Wind ruffling his hair to help ground him into his own body, and to remind him of the passage of time. He is not sure how long he has been immersed in the glacier before he realizes that it has a voice of its own. Unlike the quick temperamental voice of the Wind, the Glacier is slow and patient, and it explores Jack’s mind in return at a pace he would have found maddening were he not already so deeply enmeshed within it by his own exploration. 

Jack feels its warm amusement at the frantic pace of his own life and thoughts. The Glacier tells him its story of not just centuries but millennia of ebb and flow with the ice ages. Jack thinks he would have enjoyed one of those, and perhaps someday if the adults don’t ruin everything first he will have the chance to experience it himself. Jack feels his own thoughts slow and calm as the Glacier gentles him with its patience and grace, touching upon all the parts of his turbulent mind. The Glacier feels his insecurities and shows Jack that all he need do is wait, things always work out, and Jack admits that it is right, things did work out with the other Guardians, they will work out with whatever crisis is currently brewing as well. 

The Glacier feels out the edges of Jack’s magic, of his elemental powers. It agrees with Jack’s own assessment that there is much more to his powers than he is aware of – obviously, since Jack hadn’t even known he could talk to a glacier before now. Through him, the Glacier greets the Wind, but the Wind seems not to even notice the communication, instead impatiently brushing at Jack’s magic and pushing at Jack’s body, urging him to _move_ already. But he does not, continuing his conversation with the vast field of ice below his small body. 

And then the Glacier touches something within Jack’s mind that sparks a bright green. With the contact, pain flashes through Jack and the Glacier both, and the Glacier rips itself away from Jack with a speed that surprises him while Jack’s own magic wraps blue around the green, freezing it before it can send a warning signal out. His awareness snaps back into his own physical body, Jack’s arm and one leg give out underneath him, and he falls face first into the snow. 

But then he starts laughing where he lies. For even though he still shakes with aftershocks of pain from triggering the magic, he can recognize it now. It is the locator spell cast by Loki when they met in Antarctica before. The spell used Jack’s creation to track him not only the one time, but it is now anchored in him to allow Loki to continue to track him at will. For a moment Jack is tempted to rip it out of him now that he sees how the spell is attached, but then he realizes what he has done instinctively with his own magic, and instead probes more closely. Jack’s blue holds the green trapped in ice, and he sees that Loki’s magic batters at the shell to try and reach Loki with a signal. The locator spell must have been set to stun him upon discovery and then send a warning to Loki, but Jack’s quick response has managed to short-circuit that intent. With a little touch of white Jack calms the frantic green until it is dormant once more. When he is convinced of its return to its previous state, Jack slowly and gently releases Loki’s spell, taking care not to trigger it again in the process. When he does so, Jack sees a faint trail of green leading away, and he realizes he can now track the spell back to its creator in turn. 

With a whoop of joy, Jack jumps up from the Glacier, but before leaping into the air, he looks back down. “Thank you, Glacier,” he says with a grin. “It was nice to meet you, and if this all works out I’ll be sure to come back and let you know.” With that Jack does jump up into the air. “Wind, take me to New York!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wording of the penitentes description is partially taken from [the relevant Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penitentes).


	6. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The man’s dreams will be remarkably easy to infiltrate, that won’t be the problem for him, that is never the problem for him. No, the challenge comes in resisting the temptation to turn those dreams to blackness and fear._
> 
>  
> 
> Pitch pays a visit to his new target.

Auoogawooga is irritated with the newest Guardian. It’s one thing for Jack to test the Workshop’s security and to help with field-testing the toys, but it’s an entirely ’nother thing for him to actually _steal_ the toys after breaking them. Those were intended for children! After fixing, of course. She scoops up the remaining scraps into one large furry palm, and takes the central staircase up to North’s office to complain about the frost spirit’s actions. She almost barges straight into the office as usual, but remembering how that went the last time, Auoogawooga instead knocks and _then_ slams the door open. 

This time no train engine flies into the door to be shattered into pieces, but she does accidentally slam the door into a mustached and bespectacled man, who crashes to the floor, his blue pillbox hat flying halfway across the room. 

“Phil!” North yells. “What I say about knocking?”

Inwardly rolling her eyes at her employer adopting that silly nickname, Auoogawooga replies in Yetish, “ _Exasperation at not being acknowledged for doing what was done. Frustration at inappropriate actions of third party! Query as to why addressee does not take obvious actions._ ” 

Auoogawooga realizes that North looks so tired she can see his many centuries etched in the lines, and she grunts a worried interrogative. He sighs and explains the other man’s presence. “The Conductor update me about Billy. Is concerning.” North grips the arm of the man on the floor and easily lifts him to his feet, where he brushes off his blue jacket and straightens his lapels, then begins searching for his hat. 

Knowing the importance of the conversation she inadvertently interrupted, Auoogawooga hesitantly offers, “ _Concern caused by new colleague. Bigger concern caused by present situation._ ” 

Like flipping a light switch, North’s face lights up. “Jack! Now why didn’t you say so?” He turns to the Conductor with some quick words about reestablishing Billy’s friendship with Jamie, and that he will send Jack if possible. With a nod the Conductor leaves and North turns again to Auoogawooga. 

“Now, what problem? Jack better not be getting back on Naughty list, he is so essential to the children of the world, dah? And important to us Guardians too, he remind me to look in on individual children again. Do you think he will talk to Billy? We can’t protect that poor boy from everything, but a little fun makes it easier to bear.”

* * *

The man’s dreams will be remarkably easy to infiltrate, that won’t be the problem for him, that is never the problem for him. Black sprawls across his throne, back against one arm rest and legs draped over the other, his dark cloak spilling haphazardly around his body. With no one important to observe him, he sees no need to maintain his appearance while thinking. Hand on his chin, Black contemplates his next move, paying no mind to the shadows perpetually rustling behind the throne. No, the challenge comes in resisting the temptation to turn those dreams to blackness and fear. Inducing some small amount of fear is appropriate of course, to drive a wedge between the hero and his allies, but that alone was not enough to seduce the winter sprite to his side, and Black can certainly learn from his mistakes. Well, at least he can now that he’s actually tried out a test run of the Antarctica ploy in Stark’s dreams, and seen that it won’t work for him any more than it worked on Frost. It was worth a try though. 

Black can always take the long view, and Loki has not given him any timescale on his bid for adult-world domination and thus Black’s own plans for domination of children’s dreams. Or at least he tells Loki those are his plans. If he sees the opportunity to get the upper hand on the trickster and thus dominate the adults’ dreams as well, he will of course take it. Loki would do the same to him. But for now Loki needs Black to control and power the Hyper Obscurity. And for now Black is still far too weak from his last confrontation with the Guardians in Burgess to be able to turn even children into Nightmare Men without the help which the boost in fear their eventual attack on the adults will generate. 

Steepling his fingers in front of his face while he thinks, Black finally pushes aside his longer-term planning and returns to the idea of watching Stark’s dreams for a while. Black decides to do it in person as he always gets so much more depth that way. Rising from his throne, Black leaves a fearling and couple more tangible nightmares in charge of the world’s bad dreams, and melts into the shadows of his lair. He rides the currents of Stark’s fear through the darkness swirling around him, back to their source. He follows the taste of rusted metal in cold water, grease and oil on calloused hands, and a hint of ozone in the dry dust of a cave. _Fear that his selfishness will lead those he cares about to harm. Fear of letting down the people whom he would rather did not depend upon him in the first place. Fear of his actions causing more harm to innocents._

Black stands in the shadows of the room, fascinated by the faint glow emanating from Stark’s chest under the blankets. Loki hasn’t said much about this light source, only that it exists and serves as the heart of Stark’s djinni, which he wears to fight much the same way that Black himself wore St. North’s djinni for a short time so long ago. The blue light bathes the faces of both the adults in the bed, distorting their features due to the angle of the light coming from the man’s chest. 

The woman dreams of business deals and power suits. Of a building with the name “Potts Industries” across the top while she sits in an office chair as large as a throne. Of a redheaded woman in a short skirt with guns strapped to her thighs handing her a lemonade. Of Stark in his red- and gold-painted djinni holding a large feathered fan and wafting a gentle breeze over her. There is no reason Black needs to hold himself back with the woman, so with the slightest of touches he introduces a change, pulling the faces of people she knows from her fears – older men (Stane) patting her hand, calling her “dear,” and asking her to get them coffee; younger men (Hammer, Stark himself) looking at her legs and her chest; neither listening to her words and ideas, except when they steal those ideas and take the credit for themselves – and the woman whimpers and rolls away from Stark in the bed, curling into herself. Black chuckles but doesn’t bother to peek again. She and her dreams hold no significance to his plans, though her nightmare does feed him a pleasant little buzz of power. 

Turning to the man in the bed, Black begins to watch the nightmare of Stark’s own making, and then, when his watching is noticed, to participate.

* * *

Tony is in the Jeep in Afghanistan, rumbling over the packed sand while the soldier next to him asks if he can have his photo taken with him. Part of him knows that he’s been here before, and screams at him to change things, to tell the driver to stop, to turn around. But he says “sure,” and holds up his single-malt scotch on the rocks while the soldier throws a peace sign. Sure that the man doesn’t get the irony of it, Tony says “no gang signs.” 

There is a discontinuity, and everything explodes. This time though, instead of tan-brown dust and flashes of light, Tony sees black dust and swirling darkness. This is different, and Tony realizes that not only is this a dream, but it’s _different_ from all the previous times he dreamed it, the black sand doesn’t belong. A memory returns to him, from outside this dream, a memory of a small cold boy sitting on his workbench, telling of the biggest threat he’d ever seen. A memory of standing in Antarctica earlier as that same threat made the same offer to him he’d made to the boy. Tony hadn’t remembered the other dream while talking to the boy – Jack Frost, Tony’s mind sluggishly supplies – but now he does, and he looks up to see the Boogeyman standing beside him where he leans against the Humvee. 

As Tony locks stares with the dark man, the scenery around him changes, and he sits alone in bed, leaning against the headboard, blanket pulled up around his chest to cover the arc reactor and tucked under his arms. Tony isn’t sure how much of this scene is created by the Nightmare King before him, and how much is still his own dream, but he assumes that in either case the other would have more power, so chooses to take nothing here for granted. This is not his dream anymore, if it ever was. _Nightmare_ , Tony’s mind helpfully supplies. The other’s power comes from fear, and as the lean figure stares down at him with yellow eyes, Tony can feel his gorge rising in his throat, and swallows it back down, determined to show nothing on his face or in his behavior. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” Tony declares, voice low and firm, recalling what Jack told him his believers said. He cannot help but believe in the Nightmare King after this afternoon’s discussion, but he will not give him the satisfaction of his fear. 

The tall figure in the shadows scoffs at him and leans forward eagerly, into the pale blue light of Tony’s arc reactor. “Of course you are, I can taste it. You are full of so many fears…” As the rich voice trails off, images flash through Tony’s mind, and he cannot tell whether they come from within or are imposed upon his mind by the other. He shows his first AI to his father, who just frowns and returns to working on his aerial ice-penetrating sonar. He has just learned of his parents’ death and all he feels is numb and empty. He is in a cave with a car battery attached to his chest. He is immobile and paralyzed on a couch while the man he loved more than his own father walks away with the power source that had been keeping him alive. Worse yet, his betrayer walks towards the woman Tony cannot yet admit that he loves. He is surrounded by the blackness of space, the only lights attached to the countless numbers of ships before him and to the nuke he still grasps in his hands. And then the nuke continues towards the ships while he falls back towards Earth, its gravity still affecting him here in another universe, physics broken, and blinding light blossoms before him even as coruscating blue light irises shut around him, nearly trapping him on the other side forever. 

The images fade, leaving only a sly grin on a gray face. “Yes, you have so many fears, not because you are fearful by nature, but because you have faced so many things and overcome so much.” And now Tony knows for sure that the memories and his throbbing pulse in his veins aren’t just a panic attack, but in fact are Pitch rummaging through his head and imposing their dread upon him. This is the Nightmare King’s demesnes, he can do what he wants, though from what Jack told him earlier Pitch could even do this out in the real world. Knowing of the intrusion into his mind makes Tony feel dirty. If only he could tell when the Nightmare King was doing it. Well, he can feel the fear, that might be the only sign he needs, and it is certainly the only sign he’ll get. 

Pitch continues. “But you are not one to let your fears rule you. And _that_ intrigues me.” The tip of a pink tongue slips out from between gray lips, and quickly wets them, and for a moment Tony’s eyes are riveted to the motion, and then to the wet lips which slowly spread wider, the corners beginning to tilt upwards. With a physical shake of his head Tony tears his gaze away, up to the other’s now bright golden eyes. Like a Cheshire cat, Pitch grins at him, bright white teeth feral in the light of the arc reactor, and then takes a step back into the shadows. For a moment all Tony can see are his teeth and his eyes, then both close and are gone, and Tony can take a deep breath once more. 

A tapping on the glass of his window causes Tony to nearly jump out of his skin in fright, but when he turns he sees that his window is mostly frosted over and Jack sits on the ledge. The small form holds a finger up to his lips and gestures back at the bed. Pepper lies beside him, sound asleep and curled up on her side, facing away from him, and Tony realizes he must be awake now. God, waking from Pitch’s nightmares is irritating, and this one in particular was so vivid it takes him a while to convince himself he really is awake. Tony rubs a hand over his face and gestures Jack towards the balcony of the tower, and the spirit nods and dodges around the corner of the building. Tony slips out of the bed quietly so as to not disturb Pepper. He has a lot of practice with that after all – even when he does fall asleep next to her instead of over his workbench, he rarely sleeps a full night. 

He quietly pads out of the room, uses the light of his arc reactor to find a robe to throw over his T-shirt and boxers as he leaves his apartment, and goes out to the common room. Once there, Jarvis opens the balcony door at his request and Tony steps out into the cool night air, Jack zipping around the building as he does so. Tony ties his robe closed against the breeze that Jack brings with him as he alights on the concrete.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phil’s Yetish name is taken from my other fic, [The Yeti Union](http://archiveofourown.org/works/824533/chapters/1564794), though it’s not the same universe as this. 
> 
> Like the little Conductor ( _The Polar Express_ ) cameo there? In my headcanon, these are not only in the same universe, but moreover the Hero Boy main character is actually Jamie Bennett a couple years before the _Rise of the Guardians_ film, and this is why he believes in the Guardians so strongly despite his friends being skeptics. Billy the Lonely Boy however, is really sad – am I the only one to interpret him as that he lives in an abusive or neglectful household, and thus never gets to celebrate Christmas? :( 
> 
> I decided here Yetish would be more fun for me to write if it’s a language of emotions and I describe it that way. When I originally wrote it, Auoogawooga/Phil’s words after North scolds her for not knocking were, “ _I did knock. You shouldn’t let people hide behind the door if you don’t want it hitting them! Or you know, you could lock it – why do you think we made that wheel?_ ” And after North explains the Conductor’s visit, she says, “ _This is about the newest Guardian, Jack, but I can come back later…_ ” 
> 
> I’m really proud of Pep’s dream sequences here. She’s made it through the glass ceiling to be CEO of one of the top tech companies in the world, yet she only did so because her former boss gave the job to her while in denial over his attraction to her, and she only keeps the position because her now-boyfriend owns the company she’s in charge of. Even without those circumstances, she would have to have some hang-ups about being a woman CEO, she would have had to suffer a lot to get where she is, and all of this despite the fact that she’s got her scary amazing competence and really _is_ better than any of the other CEOs in either the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or even the comics universe. 
> 
> And yes, Tony *is* still in a relationship with Pepper here. Will that be a problem for BlackIron? How will zandperl resolve that? Wait around and... hopefully I'll figure it out myself... I've got ... ideas... Um, something like that...


	7. A Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So, uh, I made you something,” Tony continues. “Well, I got Steve to paint the outside, but it was my idea so he said I could give it to you if he wasn’t around when I next saw you. Here catch,” and with that, Tony tosses something small and blue to Jack. The size and weight are different, but the texture and shape are familiar..._
> 
> Tony gives Jack a gift.

The Wind sets Jack down on the balcony arcing out around the side of Tony’s tower. As he lands, Tony steps out onto the balcony as well, tying his robe closed, and Jack makes a little gesture to request the Wind back off its blowing in consideration of the mortal adult. With a last huff of indignation, she does so. Tony apparently catches Jack’s side of the interaction, for his eyes jerk from Jack’s hand to his face, and then his eyebrows rise in a question as the breeze stops. 

Jack grins sheepishly. “That’s the Wind. It… she… I’m not actually sure which, likes to hang out with me. That’s actually how I fly, the Wind carries me.” 

Tony sucks on his lower lip slightly, brows furrowing as he takes this in. “What does she look like?” He glances around them, as if trying to find her.

“Heh,” Jack chuckles. “The Wind doesn’t look like anything. It’s just the Wind.” He grins and leans on his staff. Apparently when this particular adult decides to believe in things, he goes in whole-heartedly. “It’s got a personality, but it’s not a person, not like us.” Jack shrugs; this makes perfect sense to him, but he can tell from Tony’s expression that it doesn’t make as much sense to the mortal. 

“Oh. Well then um, I guess it won’t be offended if we take this indoors. I swear every time I talk to you I need a drink. That okay by you?” he perfunctorily asks even while turning to walk back inside. The doors start to slide shut behind Tony, but when Jack squeaks slightly and jumps back, the doors reverse and slide open again, allowing Jack to pass inside. 

Jarvis’ smooth tones call out, “I’m sorry for precipitously closing the doors on you, Mr. Frost. I did not pick up your temperature differential due to the current weather outside.” 

Blinking a few times, Jack pads across the marble floor towards the bar where Tony pours himself a drink. “Then how did you realize I was there after all, Jarvis?”

“Tony’s actions implied your potential presence, and your exclamation confirmed it. Again, my apologies…” The voice trails off, as if contemplating adding more, but does not. Jack shrugs and twirls his staff over his shoulder, and skips over to sit on the counter top where Tony has placed a glass, a decanter of some dark brown liquid, and reaches towards a bucket of ice cubes. 

Seeing Jack, Tony pauses his reaching, and cocks his head at Jack. “Can you chill things without freezing them?” 

Jack grins at the challenge. “Try me.” 

With an answering grin, Tony pours himself the drink without the ice, and holds out the glass to Jack. He places his staff on the ground, leaning against the counter top where he sits, and lightly touches the wood with only his left thumb and forefinger. The frost within him eagerly jumps to his beck and call like always; the challenge now is to rein it in. Perhaps his practice in patience with the Glacier will help. Jack reaches within himself and calms the winter that attempts to leap out, thinks of the endless tract of ice and snow, the still bright blue of the depths, and drawing upon those memories, when he reaches out a single finger to touch the glass, his frost curls around the outside, skirting around Tony’s work-roughened fingers, and not penetrating directly into the liquid itself. 

Tony nods slightly apparently feeling the chill of the glass, and when Jack withdraws his finger he raises the glass to his lips and savors a slow sip. “Good work there, Frosty,” he compliments with a smile. “Can I get you something?” When Jack shakes his head, Tony places the glass back down on the counter top and takes a deep breath. 

“Well, now that you’re finally back, let me show you what I’ve been up to for the last two weeks.” 

For a moment, Jack thinks he must have misheard Tony. But as it sinks in, Jack is stunned by the revelation that it’s been two weeks since he left the Stark Tower previously. Two weeks? But after meeting Tony for the first time and learning about Loki, he’d just gone to K2, talked to the Glacier, and come right back. Huh, maybe his thoughts had been slowed more than he thought when speaking with it. Good thing Loki hadn’t thought to use the tracking spell during that time, he’d’ve been a sitting duck. 

“So, uh, I made you something,” Tony continues. “Well, I got Steve to paint the outside, but it was my idea so he said I could give it to you if he wasn’t around when I next saw you. Here catch,” and with that, Tony tosses something small and blue to Jack. The size and weight are different, but the texture and shape are familiar, and when Jack opens his hand to see what he holds, he is unsurprised that it is a small matryoshka doll, one of the little Russian stacking dolls North had shown him when trying to explain the concept of the center. This one however is painted to resemble Jack himself. 

Jack’s painted figure wears his usual blue hoodie and clasps his crook in two eager hands. His eyes practically glisten with subtle highlights that Steve must have used a very small brush to apply. A huge grin covers his doll’s entire face, and his white hair practically stands on end in enthusiasm. The bottom of the figure is painted brown, and when he turns it upside-down he sees in script the word “Fun”. In seemingly random locations across the surface of the doll are tiny snowflakes that actually sparkle in the light of the room. The craftsmanship is excellent, but the only confusing thing is that rather than being a tiny half inch or less in size as was North’s central doll, this one is an inch or an inch and a half in size, and shows no sign of being able to open to reveal smaller dolls. Which wouldn’t make sense anyway, as Fun is Jack’s center and he’d already told Tony this, there wouldn’t be anything inside it. Plus, it’s heavier than Jack would expect unless the inventor used a very dense hardwood, and even then it’d be close. 

Shaking the doll slightly, Jack looks up at the adult, realizing there must be more to the gift than meets the eye. Tony nods and grins. “Jarvis, strut your stuff,” he requests. 

“Of course, sir,” is the reply, only this time it comes from the doll in Jack’s hand. Jack nearly drops it in surprise, then clasps it tighter to make sure he doesn’t drop it, and he is glad to have done so as rays of light shoot out from what he thought were painted snowflakes. The beams converge in the air between himself and Tony, and as they do so an image of himself appears. 

Jack’s jaw drops at this sight, and after a moment he whispers “Wow…” 

Tony grins broadly at the impact of his invention. “So that’s a communicator with Jarvis, it’s got a microphone so he can pick up what you and people near you say, a speaker so Jarvis can talk to you or relay calls from myself or Steve or anyone else, oh yeah it’s got all the standard things I put in any StarkPhone like GPS and GSM and all that, and the best part is the hologram projector. That’s so if you want someone to see you who doesn’t believe in you, they can. I figured that might be useful if my other team members prove stubborn, or if you just want to encourage some new believers.” 

Jack is so overwhelmed, he can feel his eyelashes becoming stiff with frozen tears. Finally he jumps towards Tony and throws his arms around him before the taller man can react. He has to move his head slightly due to his ear pressing against a sharp edge of something under the inventor’s shirt, but Jack only clutches more tightly after the adjustment, his staff held in one hand and his new doll in the other, the hologram now off. Jack feels Tony awkwardly pat him on the back and mutter something like “there, there.” A few moments more pass, Jack trying not to freeze Tony’s entire shirt, when Tony pats again, then stops and clears his throat. Jack clutches for just a little longer, then realizes the movement he’s feeling from the mortal is a shiver. 

“Oh! Sorry,” he says and jumps back quickly. “I forgot you need warmth.” Jack is sure he’s blushing purple, and he turns away from Tony to brush the icicles away from his eyes. “Hey Jarvis, I wish I could hug you too. Thanks so much for your part in this. And I’ll have to thank Steve too, it’s really beautiful.”

“You’re, um,” Tony clears his throat, and as Jack turns back around he sees the man quickly lower a hand from his own face and hide it behind his back. “There’s an induction charger, you’re going to have to find a way to charge it for a couple hours every few days if you want it to work continuously. Or if you only want to use it sometimes it’s best if you charge it for a full day before using it. Though in a pinch if the battery’s dead you can use it while on the charger. Oh! And I forgot, I put in the same EMP-absorbing capabilities that I instituted with the Mark V, so actually skip everything I said about the charger, you can recharge it with a little lightning jolt whenever you need. Jarvis, if he overcharges it, discharge some in holograms or something before it explodes, wouldja be so good?”

“Of course sir, that was already my plan.” 

“I’d still suggest,” Tony continues to Jack, “that you recharge it every few days, or Jarvis maybe you can remind him when it could use a zap?”

“Excellent idea, sir.” 

“Of course it is, it’s my idea,” Tony beams to his AI. “Well, I hope Baby Tooth doesn’t mind you having a second sidekick, because now you can chat with Jarvis whenever she’s busy working.” 

At this Jack doesn’t know whether to whoop for joy or have his jaw drop to the floor. He’d have someone to talk to _all_ the time now? Wow. Now he’d never have to be lonely if he didn’t want to. This is heady stuff. 

“And if I may add, sir,” Jarvis interjects. “Mr. Frost, as long as you’re carrying the device, I will know your location so I won’t be accidentally shutting any more doors on you.” There is something of a disapproving tone at the end of the sentence, and Jack realizes that this is what Jarvis had not said at the end of his previous apology. 

“Well, thank you both so much,” Jack says with a large grin plastered across his face. “How long did you say this took you to make? And waitasec, you said I was gone for how long?”

* * *

Black knows something is wrong even before he steps out from the shadows in his home. He feels the anxiety of his nightmares as he approaches through the dark, and he does not feel the fearling at all. Although he does not step out from the shadows that he permeates once he enters the cavern, after a few moments he sees Loki cock his head and knows the trickster has sensed his presence. Black sends his own senses through the shadows of his extensive network of caves, and doesn’t find the fearling in any of them. It can’t have been destroyed however, he would have felt that. He does not have so many fearlings that he can afford to lose one, he does not have so much power than he can easily create a replacement. The only explanation is that this is Loki’s doing, but rather than give the god of mischief the satisfaction of his asking, Black decides to wait him out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The matryoshka doll is [based after this one](http://idontlikeitpaintitred.tumblr.com/post/46275433302/complete-jack-frosts-doll-requested-by) by [idontlikeitpaintitred](http://idontlikeitpaintitred.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. 
> 
> Having some writer's block on the next chapter - AGAIN - so I was tempted to delay posting since I like to have a chapter or two written out ahead, but I figured it's my birthday, I want to post!


	8. A Matter of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Loki waits until he has felt Pitch watching him for a few minutes before he visibly cocks his head, as if just noticing now. He does not however call out to the master of nightmares, instead preferring to let him stew in his worries._

Loki waits until he has felt Pitch watching him for a few minutes before he visibly cocks his head, as if just noticing now. He does not however call out to the master of nightmares, instead preferring to let him stew in his worries. Loki smiles internally at the confusion he is sure the other is experiencing, confusion at Loki’s presence in his lair, and more confusion at the lack of the fearling. Loki didn’t kill it of course, no reason to anger his temporary ally before making full use of him, but he did send it on a little trip. In the end Loki suspects that Pitch may even get more out of this little prank than Loki does – for such an old spirit, Pitch knows surprisingly little about realms other than Midgard and his Constellations. It’s true that Loki knows little of the Constellations, but from what Pitch has told him they are no longer habitable and thus are of little import. 

So yes, the fearling might bring back its master more information about the other realms than Loki would like, but he would deal with that when the fearling finds its way back, if ever. If he was to separate the fearling from Pitch for a time, Loki could not have just sent it somewhere else in Midgard, so sending it to another realm was a necessity. In the short term, keeping Pitch off-balance by distracting his fearling serves Loki’s purposes and is more important than whatever the minion might learn. 

Loki purposefully shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and it is this movement that finally triggers Pitch to silently coalesce out of the shadows. Loki feels him do so, but again pretends not to notice, despite knowing his exact location. It is always best to let enemies think they know your abilities while they really underestimate you; Pitch might be an ally for now, but such truces between creatures like themselves are always temporary, and he knows that the Nightmare King will break it as soon as he finds it advantageous to do so. After all, it is what the God of Mischief himself is planning. Loki is not entirely sure whether Pitch or himself is older, but he suspects that due to his recent travels he probably has a step up on Pitch in wisdom and power. But it is never appropriate to become overconfident. The trickster god wants to smirk at having so easily outwaited the Boogeyman, but long practice lets him do so entirely internally. 

He consciously lowers the hairs on the back of his neck as Pitch slips through shadows to soundlessly approach him from behind. When Pitch murmurs, “And what brings you here, O God of Mischief?” Loki deliberately startles and whirls to face the other being. He straightens once more, surreptitiously slips a small knife back into its sheath hidden among the seams of his armor, and looks down his nose at dark spirit just as tall as himself. 

Letting out a slow breath through his nose, as though gathering himself together again, Loki shifts to a feral grin, covering the nerves he does not actually feel. “The Frost child has noticed the bait, though he thinks he has pulled the barb from the hook. It is only a matter of time until he takes that bait and reels himself in to me. How goes your progress?” 

Golden eyes trace Loki’s form, noting every black hair out of place, seeking out folds in his leather that seem to match the one where the dagger disappeared. Returning his gaze to Loki’s green, Pitch shrugs and grimaces. “More slowly than I had anticipated. The mortal does not sleep as much as most of his kind do, and due to the rarity of it he usually sleeps too deeply for even me to penetrate.” Loki nods, silently wondering if this would still be true were Pitch at the peak of his powers. The Nightmare King continues, “But I made some progress tonight…” The bright eyes grow distant for a moment, and a gray hand runs through his hair, tucking a lock behind a slightly pointed ear. It is a delicate movement, one the spirit clearly makes unconsciously, revealing more to Loki’s eyes than he is sure Pitch meant to show. Loki deliberately changes his stance slightly, as if making himself more comfortable, to draw Pitch’s attention back to the present moment and out of his thoughts of the human. Pitch blinks a couple times, then returns to the conversation. 

“Stark will fall.” Pitch’s voice is resolute. “Like Frost, it is only a matter of time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry so short! This was originally an interlude at the start of the next chapter, but then it got too long for that so I decided to split it off even if it made for a short chapter on its own. Also gives me a bit more time to work on Ch 9 (Catching Up) which is currently kicking my ass. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's reading! ~~I'm still looking for a beta - especially for a Sif Week entry now: ~1,000 words, grad school AU, inspired by music. It's complete from my end, and it's going up Feb 16. If anyone wants a sneak peek of it in exchange for giving me feedback, lemmie know!~~ zandperl-AT-gmail-DOT-com
> 
> Edit: Unintentional hiatus is unintentional! I got sucked into writing two other works, one of which is that Sif Week entry which is now complete, and the other is a 10,000-word crossover between _In Nomine_ and a SEKKRIT fandom that I guarantee you know and love, but which I'm not revealing in its tags because I want it to be a surprise *dum dum dum*! I'm waiting on one last beta on that before it goes up, since I actually found a beta who knows both IN and the sekkrit fandom.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm on Tumblr](http://zandperl.tumblr.com), [LJ](http://zandperl.livejournal.com), and [DW](http://zandperl.dreamwidth.com), if you care about that sorta thing. If you find a zandperl anywhere else, that's also me but I probably don't use that thing as much.
> 
> Also, I'm looking for a beta! My fandoms include MCU (Avengers, Iron Man, Thor), RotG, In Nomine, WTNV, and X-Men. You can contact me via email at Gmail, username zandperl, or using one of the above social mediases.


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